Patient characteristics, methods of evaluation and treatment of ocular melanoma in the United States for the years 1981 and 1987.

The American College of Surgeons performed a patient care and evaluation study of malignant melanoma for 1981 and 1987 to determine the presenting symptoms, methods of evaluation, clinical management and resulting outcome. A previous report on malignant melanoma of the skin has been published. This report details the findings of 245 ocular melanomas in 1981 and 275 ocular melanomas in 1987. Most of the ocular melanomas were uveal. The patients with ocular melanoma were older than the patients with skin melanoma. No significant difference was found in the number of ocular instances by gender and by study year. A high percentage of non-Hispanic Caucasians were documented with this disease, and a high percentage of ocular melanomas were not classified by the standard Callender classification. A significant number of melanomas had pigmentation, and a significant number of patients had imaging studies that, in the absence of an elevated alkaline phosphatase, usually yielded negative results. Most patients were treated with enucleation, with an increase in frequency of radiation therapy from 1981 to 1987. Local and regional recurrence was not a problem, but systemic metastases occurred frequently. Type of histologic factors by the Callender classification had an influence on survival.